Insight: Chavista militants may be wild card after Venezuela vote

CARACAS (Reuters) - Sitting in front of a mural of Jesus and the Virgin Mary armed with AK-47s, three red-shirted children are clutching assault rifles and copies of Venezuela's constitution.

The photo, taken in a poor Caracas neighborhood and posted online earlier this year by the militant left-wing group "La Piedrita" (The Little Stone), triggered outrage across the South American nation and beyond.

For many abroad, it was their first glimpse inside Venezuela's "colectivos" - radical organizations that call themselves the guardians of Hugo Chavez's socialist project and defenders of their local communities.

In the eyes of critics, the groups are bandana-clad killers and vigilantes, the shock troops of the president's self-styled revolution. They have become more high-profile in the last four years, and some have been blamed for attacks on people they are said to perceive as enemies of Chavez.

With a presidential election looming on October 7, opposition members fear the colectivos will turn to violence if challenger Henrique Capriles defies the polls and wins.

Although the president denies it, some of his opponents have long worried Chavez could simply refuse to go should he lose.

In rare interviews with Reuters in the 23 de enero (January 23) slum, the colectivos' heartland near the city center, some of their leaders said they were targets of right-wing propaganda.

"We're the ones least interested in violence or instability, because our triumph (Chavez's re-election) is assured," Juan Contreras, co-founder of the Coordinadora Simon Bolivar group, said at its headquarters, a former police base now adorned with revolutionary paintings.

"We and many other colectivos are armed, but armed with consciousness, with education."

This is an election unlike any before in Venezuela, with Chavez ostensibly recovering from cancer and a newly united opposition supporting a single candidate for the first time.

Against that tense backdrop, the colectivos' very existence underlines the risk of street unrest in a divided society where guns proliferate, impunity reigns, and the murder rate is one of the highest in the world.

Despite their unstinting support for Venezuela's colorful leader and his policies, the more radical groups are something of a public relations nightmare for him, often described as "even more Chavista than Chavez."

Stung by the reaction to the picture of the armed children, two small girls and a boy, La Piedrita said it was taken during a kids' theater production about Venezuelan guerrilla leaders of the past, and the guns were fakes.

Since then, security forces have stormed the slum and tried to arrest La Piedrita's leader. Chavez himself has weighed into the debate, even suggesting that the CIA might be behind some of the recent drama in 23 de enero.

SOCIALIST EXPERIMENT

Overlooking the ornate Miraflores presidential palace, the hilly area draws its name from January 23, 1958, when military dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez fled the country amid widespread rioting and a coup by rebel soldiers.

One of the main scenes of the 1989 "Caracazo" - the Caracas riots over price rises when troops fired on demonstrators and killed hundreds - the slum's monolithic tower blocks, jumbled stacks of modest houses and winding alleys are home to about 100,000 people.

Most residents are fiercely proud of their neighborhood's long history of left-wing activism.

Today, the slum is something of a laboratory for Chavez's socialist project: Stores sell milk and meat from nationalized producers at steep discounts, residents do volunteer work cleaning up streets, and some youth "pioneer" groups are modeled on similar ones in communist ally Cuba that fuse leftist ideology with kids' activities such as sports and camping.

Residents - many suspicious of reporters, whom they associate with pro-opposition private media - say the Caracas police do not patrol in 23 de enero. Sometimes National Guard troops pass through, they say, but rarely.

In almost one square mile (about two-square-kilometers) of one of most dangerous cities in the Americas, security is almost entirely in the hands of the colectivos. Some set up armed roadblocks after dark, communicating by walkie-talkie, stopping cars and questioning passengers.

Though scattered around Venezuela and probably numbering a few thousand members, the dozen or so best-known colectivos are based in 23 de enero. In a report in June, the International Crisis Group think tank warned they could be used by politicians to stoke violence or could "take to the streets on their own."

The Venezuelan government did not respond to requests for comment on the colectivos' role or the opposition's charges.